Hello all,
Another noob for your ranks, my teenage son is interested in making knives and we got this forge and anvil from a farmer. It has been a toolshed with a bad roof but seems restorable. He thinks they are from before 1902. The blower is siezed but we have not tried flushing it out with diesel fuel yet. There are no markings on the forge except the blower has 547 and 546 on each side of the housing and the tube has a 19. Could any of you identify what we have here?
Thanks

Hard to say anything about the dates. The forge is a very common farm-type forge and you saw them on farms and construction sites. They are often called rivet forges because they were used to heat rivets for building sky-scrapers. Watch the old footage with them building the Empire State Building as you'll see them in use.

The anvil could be a Peter Wright, but I'm no expert on them. I can tell you that half of the tool-steel top plate is missing so you'll be beating on the wrought-iron under body for the most part. That doesn't mean that it's a waste, though. It sure beats a piece of railroad track!!

this looks like a set Sears&Roebuck used to sell as a farmers shop you can see them in their old catalogs.true rivet forges had wheels on one set of legs a lot of times and handles on one side so it could be rolled along something like a wheel barrow as the riveting moved along. not all small forges like this were true rivet forges even though thats the name they most often get associated with a great many of these small forges were sold just for light farm work Sears and Montgomery Wards sold a start up blacksmith tool set of this forge an anvil around 100 pounds,leg vise,post drill and a couple sets of tongs. they advertised them as the Ideal farm shop for the farmer that needed the occasional forge work done "Save that annoying trip into town for the blacksmith to repair something along with the lost time "

I've been told that mechanism (you're missing the handle in the pics) is transitional from bellows to blower. Later styles have a hand-crank blower instead of the pump handle that works the mechanism to turn the big wheel which has a belt to turn the blower. I have one similar that I use on occasion but prefer hand cranking to pumping. I believe the pump mechanism was mostly available late 1800's. though I could be wrong on that.

ron

the anvil has seen better days , be looking for a new one, the forge will take some redoing but will work nice when its going , i still use one to this day...

Ya know, I'm half a hair away from taking back my earlier statement regarding the top plate.

Anyone else notice how high the top plate is above the main body right before the hardy hole?

Compare that to the height of the main body from the cutting table just prior to the horn.

It looks like the step up from the horn is a solid .500".... and then you have another .500" from that to the top of the remainder of the top plate.

If you were to continue the line of the top plate all the way across the anvil, it would be a good jump up from the cutting table. I've not seen many anvils with such a large leap betwixt the two, and the thickness of the heel is substantial.

The combination of the two has me wondering.